Stop! Wait a Minute. Hold my cup…
This idea needs to end
“Yes, it is just a theory”
After describing the details of Einstein’s theory, this is a response I occasionally get.
And I get it. I was once there. My lecturer taught me the same thing in my first year of campus.
But it has to change.
I don’t know how I’ll help change it, but if I manage to get to one person, I hope they spread the word about it.
And the message is this:
Saying it’s a theory does not dispute it.
Let me break it down for you.
Laws and Principles are not Laws and Principles — They are Theories
My lawyer and advocate friends love the line: the law is very clear.
All the while they know very well how to thrive in a field with ‘clear’ laws. There are ways of making a living from the blurred lines stated in every constitution.
Yes, the law is clear, but my vision is not as clear as yours.
Laws, the kind that govern humans, are not the same laws we see in the wild.
- A male lion will quickly pounce on another if it notices a new face in its territory.
- A male mouse might kill the offspring of a female mouse just so it can raise its own children.
- Female mantises stand a chance of decapitating their male counterparts when mating.
These laws would have earned every one of them a sentence in jail.
But the first lesson is laws are rules which prohibit.
For you to be a law-abiding citizen, the law prohibits you from:
- pouncing on another person because they have parked in your spot
- killing your friend’s children
- cutting off your partner’s head during intercourse.
The last example is grotesque.
It is largely prevented by constitutional and international laws.
Laws prohibit.
This concept also applies to science.
Like laws, scientific concepts prohibit.
Hooke’s Law, for instance, talks of the proportionality of forces stretching springs within certain limits. The limit defines the law’s domain — where it applies. The proportionality explains the observation when you attach a force to a string.
It prohibits any other behaviour other than the one described by Robert Hooke.
Past the elastic limit, the law does not apply.
As far as it works in a certain domain, the law is just a name. In practice, it is a theory.
Theories are the highest levels of scientific evidence. You cannot get any higher.
The arguments I get about Relativity being a theory are usually unfounded. It stems from a misunderstanding of how science operates.
For testability, the scientific method demands theories prohibit certain events from happening.
We can use the same law, Hooke’s law, as an example.
Different springs made of different materials have different elasticities. We can have two springs, A and B. If one string can hold 10kgs worth of weight and another doesn’t, the first one has an elasticity limit beyond 10kgs.
If we are to plot a graph, the stretchability will be proportional to the weight added to the spring. It will be a straight line through the origin.
For the second one, not quite.
Since the first spring has yet to reach its elastic limit, the law prohibits it from behaving like the second spring. The second spring already exceeded its elastic limit.
It would stretch but not in accordance with Hooke’s law.
Scientific laws are theories. And theories have to be tested.
A famous one is the black swan.
The statement goes: All swans are white.
To validate this statement (theory), we can ask if indeed all swans are white. It is a theory. If we find a black or purple swan, we then discover the limits of the theory.
Science progresses through prohibition.
If we take laws to be just that, absolute and irrevocable, then science would hardly have made steps.
The mysterious case of the eclipse
Imagine the law:
Eclipses happen because the gods are angry with us.
If we took this law as an indisputable law, we would never question it. It would always stick from generation to generation, that eclipses are a sign for us to repent and atone for our misgivings.
To appease the gods, tribes, and societies would engrave different forms of rights and rituals for people to adhere to during eclipses.
The argument would be — it works.
We have been doing it every other time. And it has never failed us.
But if we are to take the law as a theory, we would test it.
Say one time, a bold group of individuals decides not to follow the rituals. Rather than follow the dictates of the tribe, they go about their duties. Or, alternatively, sit and wait.
After around 8 minutes, they’d begin to see the eclipse fading away.
To these individuals, they would have refuted the ‘law’ of the tribe.
The next bold step would be to find another theory better suited to explain the eclipse.
In science, prohibition frees.
It frees you from previous scientists.
It frees you from previous laws.
It frees you to pursue the better option.
Prohibition liberates.
Science progresses through prohibition.
You would not have had the device in front of you if James Clerk Maxwell had not tested the idea of light and electromagnetism. He was liberated to test theories.
Tycho Brahe’s calculations put planets in circles. It prohibited any other geometrical trajectory for the plants in the solar system.
Copernicus, however, found bulging areas when he traced the motion of planets by himself. He falsified Brahe’s laws.
Later, Newton’s laws of gravity explained the distance between two mass objects. They were accurate up to a point. They could not explain the bulging movement in Mercury’s orbit. While his law prohibited it from happening, Mercury’s trajectory defied his law.
Enter Einstein.
His theory described the bulge in Mercury’s trajectory. It further described the red-shifting of light and gravitational lensing. His theory prohibited anything from traveling faster than light.
His theory sparked a series of questions resulting in the discovery of domains where his theory does not hold:
The quantum domain.
These steps happen through prohibition.
The laws are not laws or principles. Even Archimedes’ principle has its drawbacks.
All science is theoretical. As is any law you can conjure, scientific or otherwise.
Saying a theory is just a theory and not a law is a fundamental misunderstanding of how science operates. I thank philosophers of science for making this clear to me.
But who has the time to read a book by Charles Sanders Pierce or Karl Popper? Not many.
So I hope I hope this small treatise clears things up for you.
The next time you’re in the bar, and somebody dismisses an idea by simply saying: Yes, it is only a theory, not a law…
Tell them:
Stop, wait a minute. Hold my cup
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